4.05.2014

When Dr. Penny Patterson, a young graduate student in psychology at Stanford, first saw a tiny, undernourished baby gorilla named Hanabi-Ko at the San Francisco Zoo, she had little inkling that the sickly ape would become her constant companion - and the subject of the longest continuous experiment ever undertaken to teach language to another species. Penny Patterson has devoted her entire adult life to Koko and this project. The pictures on her fridge are of Koko and her former mate, Michael.

Penny hates the fact that humans hold animals as prisoners in zoos. So do i. Koko was born in a zoo, not captured in the wild like Micheal. Penny and other researchers believe Micheal's parents were both killed by poachers in Cameroon, and that Michael was able to tell them this by signing: “Squash meat gorilla. Mouth tooth. Cry sharp-noise loud. Cut/neck.” Like all of us Koko, Micheal, Kanzi and Washoe all used complex combinations of signs to communicate concepts they had never learned a sign for.

Koko, if you’re not familiar, was taught American sign language when she was about a year old. Now 40, she apparently has a working vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs and understands around 2,000 words of spoken English. Forty years on, the Gorilla Foundation’s Koko project has become the longest continuous inter-species communications programme of its kind anywhere in the world. Every cent raised by the Gorilla Foundation goes into upkeep. All other proceeds go to habitat restoration and wildlife education in native gorilla locales.

Koko describes herself as a ‘fine person gorilla’. Everyone who interacts with her acknowledges that Koko is conscious. Millions have read the award-winning classic 'Koko's Kitten' which recounts the real life experience of Koko, her love for a tailless tabby she named "All-Ball" and her grief when the kitten died. Koko still gets sad when she sees a picture of a tailless kitten.

Koko is only too aware of man’s occasionally horrific interactions with wild gorillas. Dr. Patterson recounts, “It happened by accident — someone sent a DVD about primates and I didn’t really look at it,” she says. “But it was playing and when I looked I saw Koko watching a graphic bushmeat scene. I hadn’t previewed it like I should have. The next day we were in with Koko and I was going through some mail. Koko picked up an insert from a newspaper and it was a supermarket ad. She held up a section full of pictures of meat and signed: “shame there”. Shame everywhere Koko.

My daughter and i used to watch Koko videos when she was. younger but i had to stop watching them a many years back because they are all both moving and very sad. i used to have dreams about Koko, nightmares sorta.

Koko is conscious, she knows she's a prisoner. Koko is nice to the Penny and the others in part because she wants/needs companionship. Sometimes she gets mad at her situation and says with her sign language ,then starts trying to destroy her enclosure in an attempt to escape.

Every seed is awakened and so is all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being and we therefore yield to our animal neighbours the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land." -Sitting Bull

All animals are conscious, every thing is our cousin. When Koko signs, "Koko Free Gorilla Animal", i cry.

La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies that are destroying people and nature.

Sitting Up Mud

"Bokonon made mud. Bokonon said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job Bokonon had done.

"Nice going, Bokonon. Nobody but you could have done it, I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to You. The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around. I got so much, and most mud got so little. Thank you for the honor!"

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep. What memories for mud to have! "What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met! I loved everything I saw! Good night. Amen."

Quotes

"Our dreams draw us foward, as water whispers to the dowser's wand."- Tony Cohan

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide." - Tom Robbins

"Politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for!" -Jerry Rubin

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman

When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, “At least the handle is one of us.” — Turkish proverb

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction" - Pascal

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

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Theism?

Flying Spagetti Monster Church

The single greatest service each of us can provide to our planet, our families and ourselves is to grow our own organic food from heritage seeds. Then to save our own seed in turn, and in so doing be part of the future solution to the present day destruction being sown by GMO's, agri-business and the bio-technology giants. - Bob Wiley